Last year, when I announced the ten nonfiction picture books I was
recommending for the Sibert Smackdown! in early December, some people wished I
had posted the list sooner.

I
completely understand their dilemma. It can be hard to plan and implement this
kind of activity in just 6 weeks, especially with a major holiday right in the
middle.

So I
have good news. In 2018, ALA Midwinter is later than normal, so the YMA ceremony isn’t until February 12. That gives us all
more time to read and consider.

Still, I know it’s helpful to have as much
advance notice as possible, so today I’m posting the list I’m currently
considering. The final list, which will be posted in early December, may be slightly different.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve shared academic
articles with evidence that nonfiction in general and expository nonfiction in
particular is more popular among elementary students than most of us might
think. Simply
put, what the children’s literature community calls broccoli, many kids call
chocolate cake.

I
was satisfied that those studies made a strong case for making expository nonfiction more
available to students and integrating it into more classroom lessons, but a few
weeks ago, Terrell Young, a professor of education at Brigham Young University
in Utah, sent me a newly published article with even stronger evidence.

The study included 42 students in first grade
(21 girls and 21 boys) and 42 students in fourth grade (21 girls and 21 boys) who
were evenly divided among the three reading levels (below, at, and above grade
level) and from a range of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. All of the
children had received equal exposure to expository and narrative text since
kindergarten.

Each student was introduced to five sets of books.
Each set consisted of one fiction title and one expository nonfiction title on the
same topic. The children were encouraged to take their time with the books,
browsing, skimming, or reading as much as they wanted to and then asked which
ones they would like to read. They could choose as many as they liked.

The students’ selections showed that 67% of
first grade boys and 48% of fourth grade boys had a clear preference for the expository
books. 19% of first grade boys and 33% of fourth grade boys liked the narrative
and expository titles equally.

38% of first grade girls and 19% of fourth
grade girls had a clear preference for the expository books. Another 38% of first
grade girls and 62% of fourth grade girls liked the narrative and expository titles
equally.

In other words, for both grade levels and both genders, more than 75 percent of
students liked the expository books as much as or more than narrative titles.
42 percent had a moderate or strong preference for expository nonfiction.These are powerful results.

Once
again, I encourage you to get the full article and read it. I’ll be sharing findings
from the Scholastic Reading Report next
week.

Monday, September 25, 2017

This
year I’ll be working to increase the academic independence of theyoung dreamers, thinkers, problem-solvers,
and explorers in my classroom. The nonfiction books and series listed below
will help support these budding independent readers.

Pink is for Blobfish:
Discovering the World’s Perfectly Pink Animals (2016)and What
Makes a Monster? Discovering the World’s Scariest Creatures (2017)reel the reader in with big, bold
photographs on the left-hand side of each double-page spread. The right-hand
sidegives us some fascinating facts
about the featured creature, including a sidebar with species name, habitat,
diet, and more. Bold words in the text are defined in the glossary. Clever
cartoons illustrate a particular fact from the page. Concise and engaging,
readers can linger over their favorite creatures or continue on to the next. I
look forward to the next book in this series!

This
book is part of the Animal Lives series, which
also includes such titles as Alligators
and Crocodiles, Bears, Bees and Wasps, and Eagles. Photographs dominate the text here, connecting the pictures
to the information shared with the reader. Bright bubbles pop with a “Tortoise
and turtle fact” on almost every double-page spread. Headings, subheadings,
captions, bold words, glossary, and index help readers navigate through the
informational text. While most readers will want to read this book cover to
cover, each heading can be used as a place to stop and pick up the book another
day. I need to purchase more of these titles for the classroom library.

Zoom in on Insects series by Melissa Stewart (Enslow, 2014)This
new-to-me series, which I found in my local library, highlights several
insects, including bees, dragonflies, ladybugs and lightning bugs. Limited text
on each page allows a child to explore the close-up photos of a given feature
(eyes, legs, etc.). Topic-specific vocabulary is explained in the book’s front
matter, before the reader encounters it. A full-page photo of the insect is
labeled to show each important body part. At the end of the text, the life
cycle of the insect is represented through photographs and labels. Even readers
who are just beginning to read more independently will feel successful
navigating this text. I’ll be sure to bring these into the class for students
who have an interest in insects!

This
is just one of the many survey books by this author/illustrator that I’ve
collected throughout my teaching career. Her titles cover a vast array of
topics, including animals, holidays, modes of transportation, the solar system
and much more. Within Gibbons’ books, the definitions of topic-specific
vocabulary is embedded within the text or among the illustrations. Unlike many
nonfiction titles, photographs give way to illustrations colored with pencil
and/or watercolor paints. Developing readers will find pronunciation guides
within the text for more difficult words. Additional information, often accompanied
by drawings, can be found in the back.

Children
are all about superlatives: fastest, fiercest, toughest, indeed! The reader
does not need to read this text sequentially but can move around as the mood
strikes. At 200-plus pages, this volume is unlike the others in my list (most
of which are around 32 pages), but it’s not intimidating, perhaps due to the
nature of the eye-catching paper collage art and fun infographics. The book’s
design guides the reader through the content, which includes clear headings (family,
predators, senses, defenses, etc.), a brief introductory paragraph, and specific
animal information that highlights the
trait or topic being discussed. Due to some of the topic-specific vocabulary,
some readers may need more teacher assistance with this book than with other texts listed
here. This is definitely a book that I’ll need to share with my young readers.

Lesley Burnapis a third grade teacher who loves nothing more than to
hang out with her dog and read. A happy member of NCTE, MRA, and the Nerdy Book
Club, she has worked in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts for 27 years. (Phew!) You can
follow her on Twitter @LBurnap90.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Last spring, Fran
Wilson (@mrswilsons2nd), a second grade teacher in Ohio, and her teaching
partner Nicole Prater shared eight of my books with their students. The books
had a range of text structures and features.

After the class
discussed the content of a book, Fran and Nicole asked the children: “What do
you notice about the writing craft the author, Melissa Stewart, used in a
book?”

In some cases, this
led to the class re-reading the book under a document camera. The teachers recorded
the students’ observations. For example, in When Rain Falls, they noticed:

--italic type is used
to label the habitats,

--the text was
written as a journey,

--repetition was used throughout the
book.

When a child
spontaneously announced that they could write a book like When Rain Falls, the whole class got excited. Fran seized the
opportunity. She invited students to brainstorm new ideas for books with the
same structure and writing crafts as the books they had explored. The children
had lots of great ideas, including:

When Night Comes

When Spring Comes

When Leaves Fall

When the Sun Comes Up
No Bees, No Flowers

No Squirrels, No Oak
Trees

Close Up on Monarchs

Each student chose a
topic and began writing. During this process, they viewed the video
mini-lessons on my website. According to Fran, this made the children “feel
very connected to you and that they themselves were real writers too.”

When the drafts were
complete, the children asked to type their manuscripts using google docs.
They decided to add real photos instead of drawing illustrations. This led
to teach a lesson on how to search for photos, insert them, and include credit
for the source of the photos.

But the project
didn’t stop there.

This weekend the
Cincinnati (Ohio) Nature Center will feature the students’ books at their Great
Outdoor Weekend event. If you live in the area, you may want to stop by
and see their great work.

And if you don’t live
nearby, look for the students’ writing samples and learn more about this great
project in the “From a Child’s Point of View” column in an upcoming issue of the
International Literacy Association’s Dragon Lode journal. You may want to give this project a try at your school.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Last week I shared two academic articles with
evidence that nonfiction in general and expository nonfiction in particular is
more popular among primary students than most of us might think. Simply put, what the
children’s literature community calls broccoli, many kids call chocolate cake.

Today I’m back with another study. It’s similar to the
one I was interested in conducting myself (though the boy vs. girl angle wasn’t on
my radar), but thanks to Ray Doiron, I don’t have to.

In
a previous study, Doiron had found that students at his elementary school
checked out twice as much nonfiction as fiction. For this study, he focused on
just the books students were choosing to
read. To do this, he eliminated data for books being checked out for school
assignments.

Over
3 years, Doiron collected data for 10,000 library transactions among students
in grades 1-6 and found that students checked out about 60% fiction and 40%
nonfiction for pleasure reading. Boys chose nonfiction more than twice as often
as girls.

In
last week’s post, I asserted that the children’s literature community has a
bias against expository nonfiction because people who choose jobs as editors,
librarians, literacy educators, etc. connect more strongly with stories and
storytelling than the general population, and I still believe that’s true.
However, the results from this study as well as the studies I highlighted last
week indicate that boys have a stronger affinity for nonfiction, especially
expository nonfiction, than girls. Is this due to societal influences rather
than an innate preference? Maybe, but that’s a topic for another day.

Here’s
what I want to focus on right now: Since the children’s literature community is
overwhelmingly female, I suspect that gender may be a contributing factor to
the bias against expository nonfiction.

Once
again, I encourage you to get the full article and read it. I’ll be sharing
more research next week.

Monday, September 18, 2017

My students could not stop looking at this one. The
infographics are fascinating and when you add Jenkins' unique artwork, it makes
for a very special book. We learned about what animals really are dangerous
(not what we thought) and that there are a LOT of insects in this world. Really
I could have picked anything by Jenkins. His books continue to be some of the
most popular each year.

Nic Bishop's book are extraordinary. My students
and I cannot get enough of them because his photography is stunning. Coupling
the amazing photos with interesting facts, these books are some of my favorites
for getting kids to wonder and ask questions! One of my favorite pictures has a
frog with a mysterious item coming out of his mouth. Many kids thought it was a
tooth, but no, it belonged to a critter!

I love the slightly different take the author
has on plants. When I first saw it, the book really connected with me because I
had been fascinated (while mowing the lawn) by weeds that burst when you
touched them and their seeds went EVERYWHERE! Amazing pictures too!

If you have kids who just have to know how
things work, here you go. Castles, jet planes, toilets—all fascinating! I love
Macaulay's books because they are illustrated, which is a little different. This
new series is for a younger age level than Macaulay's previous titles, which I
appreciate.

Jim Arnosky continues to amaze me with his
attention to detail and gorgeous illustrations. He packs so much information
into this book and, of course, readers love the pages that open up to really
give a sense of how big the predators are.

Jenny
Lussier is a teacher librarian
for grades PreK-4 and formerly a fifth/sixth grade teacher in Regional School
District 13 in Durham & Middlefield, CT. She has a passion for research,
children’s literature, and technology and loves to share and learn with kids
and adults! You can find her hiking, biking, gardening, and of course sharing
favorite books wherever she goes.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Reading
nonfiction picture books aloud can be tricky because they often contain significantly
more words than fiction picture books. And even if the art is enticing and the
writing is engaging and the information is fascinating, a picture book read
aloud shouldn’t last too long.When
I plan a nonfiction read aloud, I ask myself a lot of questions. What parts of
the book should I highlight? Should I skip over anything? Would additional
visuals or props improve the audience’s experience? Would using a document
camera help? Sometimes I make the right decisions on the first try. But other
times, the kids surprise me, and I make adjustments as I go along.

For
Can an Aardvark Bark?, I thought students would be excited to make the animal sounds throughout the book’s main
text. But I worried that reading the spreads that featured secondary text about
four animal examples might be too much. I considered reading just the main text
and pointing out the four exemplar animals shown, but that would mean skipping
over a lot of cool information.

When
I asked author Josh Funk (@joshfunkbooks) for advice, he suggested that I read
just one or two of the examples.

“And
kids can choose the examples,” I said, piggybacking on his idea. I was
confident that this combination of strategies—making animal sounds and choosing
animal examples—would make for a great read aloud. But I was wrong.

It
turns out students weren’t as enthusiastic about making the animal
sounds as I expected. What captivated them was the information. They stayed
quiet so they wouldn’t miss a thing.

Luckily,
my other strategy—letting students choose the animal examples—was a huge hit. On
pages where the vote was close, I read the two top choices, and everyone was
happy.

What
was my take away from this experience? I was delighted to discover that the
thing kids liked most about the book—the fascinating information about how and
why animals communicate—was the same thing that inspired me to write it in the
first place. What could be better than that?

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Right
now, the children’s literature community is enamored with narrative nonfiction—books
that tell true stories. It receives more starred reviews and wins far more awards than expository nonfiction.

That's because most of the people who choose jobs related to children’s
literature—editors, book reviewers, librarians, literacy educators, awards
committee members—value and connect strongly with stories and storytelling. And
it’s natural for them to assume that young readers feel the same way, especially
when we hear things like “humans are hardwired to love story.”

But
today, I’m going to disrupt your thinking.

For
years, I’ve been questioning the idea
that everyone loves stories. Based
on my own experience as a reader and conversations I’ve had with children and educators, what
I see is that some children are, indeed, naturally drawn to narratives. But
others are more excited about ideas and information and would rather read
expository nonfiction. Still others enjoy both expository and narrative texts.

My
observations have led me to hypothesize that there’s what I call a
narrative-analytical thinking continuum. The general population spans the
continuum, but the children’s literature community is clumped at the narrative
end.

I’m
concerned that young analytical thinkers are currently being underserved
because gatekeepers don’t appreciate the kind of books that these children
enjoy. Simply put, what the children’s literature community calls broccoli,
many kids call chocolate cake.

By
last spring, I felt so strongly about this issue that I decided to take a
sabbatical from writing and conduct a study of elementary students’ reading
preferences. Because I had no idea how to structure or conduct a study, I dove
into the academic literature. And that’s when my mind was blown.

The
research already exists, and it’s powerful. Why don’t more people know about
it?

A K teacher who initially believed her students
prefered fiction tracked their library checkouts for 19 weeks and found that
the children chose more nonfiction than fiction titles 14 out of 19 weeks. One
week they checked out an equal number of fiction and nonfiction books. Each
week, more boys than girl chose nonfiction.

190 first graders were invited to choose one of nine
high-quality, well-illustrated picture books to keep forever. The books
included five fiction titles and four nonfiction titles—one expository
nonfiction, one picture book biography, one nonfiction poetry, and one hybrid
nonfiction. The children viewed the books one at a time (so they weren’t
influenced by their friends’ choices). Students could take as long as they
wanted to make a decision and were encouraged to look closely at the books as
part of the decision-making process.

What were the results? 84% of students chose a
nonfiction book. 46% chose the expository nonfiction title, while only 3% chose
the picture book biography. More boys (96%) than girls (69%) chose nonfiction titles.

What was the mega-popular expository nonfiction
title?

I
encourage you to get the full articles and read them. I’ll be sharing more
research in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

Monday, September 11, 2017

On March 7, 2017, author Melissa
Stewart wrote a guest post for the Nerdy
Book Club asking us to think about the value of expository literature. She
concluded the post with a list of fifty titles. This school year, 2017-2018,
she is hosting a series of posts asking teachers and librarians to list five
expository titles. Expository titles inform, describe or explain. I
decided to focus on the world of animals

Last year we were introduced to
the fascinating world of insects and invertebrates in The Big
Book of Bugs (Thames & Hudson, 2016). In this companion
volume, we venture into a marvelous collection of mammals. Each page turn
will remind you of the familiar but is guaranteed to present something new and
astounding. Sifting through extensive information, Yuval
Zommerselects those details most likely to be remembered by readers. In
a series of conversational statements, beginning with a question, we are given
valuable insights into individual mammals and overviews of special areas.

For nineteen years author Melissa Stewart has been
acquainting readers with the results of her passion for and meticulous research
of all forms of science. In this most recent publication, she explores sounds
made by animals in a variety of habitats. The rhyming questions she asks
in one section, and then answers in another, elevates interest. For each sound,
seven in total, she discusses five animals. At the close of the book Selected
Sources and For Further Reading sections are shown. Melissa
Stewart designed a Storytime
Guideand a Teacher’s Guide to go with it.

This upbeat, informative, and
completely hilarious book, introduces us to twenty-three animals we rarely
encounter in books. The manner in which Martin Brown weaves together facts and
humor captivates and fascinates. For each one, Martin Brown provides a clever
remark referencing a distinctive quality followed by a half to whole page
discussion revealing the animals most intriguing characteristics. He also includes
a sidebar with their size, what they
eat, where they live, their conservation
status, and an extra fact. At times, Martin includes an additional
sidebar with other items of interest. He dedicates two pages to a glossary at
the end.

No single day passes without
observations of creatures in the wild. It can be as normal as birds flying
from one place to the next or as surprising as looking out your window and
seeing the local fox trotting down the sidewalk at dusk. We are most fortunate
to be sharing this planet with beings who have adapted as best they can to
their habitats. This book is a stunning visual presentation of eighty
animals that live in North America, Europe and Asia. Woven into conversational
paragraphs are items of interest to a wide range of readers.

What Makes A Monster?: Discovering the World's Scariest Creatures by Jess
Keating (Knopf/Penguin Random House, 2017)
Most dictionaries define the word monster by using the word imaginary. Monsters
are simply not real. Or are they? If you want to read a book, gasping at
every page turn, this is a title you can't miss! Armed with knowledge of her
subject and gifted for knowing exactly what readers need and want to know, Jess Keatingeducates
her readers like a master teacher. For each of the seventeen animals, she
begins with an informative narrative paragraph. This is followed by local
superstitions, feeding habits, a detailed explanation of unique traits, and
more. She also includes information about the animals’ size, diet, habitat,
and predators and threats.

Margie Culver can’t remember a time when she
was not reading. With every turn of the page, her views, impressions, and
understanding of the world--past, present, future, and fantastical--have
increased. She’s been educated and entertained; had her heart broken and made
whole again. She began her career as a certified teacher librarian in 1973,
fostering life-long reading and adept gathering and use of information for her
students and staff. In Margie’s words, “It has been the single best decision
that I have ever made.” She writes posts about as many wonderful books as
possible on her blog, Librarian’s Quest. You are welcome to
follow Margie on Twitter @Loveofxena

Friday, September 8, 2017

We all know that next Monday is
the anniversary of one of the worst days in U.S. history, but it’s also
International Rock Flipping Day—a time to celebrate all the critters that live
under rocks as well as the natural curiosity that inspires us to take a closer
look at the world around us.

All you have to do is go outside and look under a rock or two. Then record what
you see by drawing, painting, taking photographs of what you see. You can also
write down what you see. (If you live in a place where you might find poisonous
creatures, like scorpions or snakes, under a rock, I encourage you to use a
stick to flip the rocks.) When you are done, carefully return the rock to its
original position.

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About Me

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 180 nonfiction books for children. Her lifelong fascination with the natural world led her to earn a B.S.
in biology and M.A. in science journalism. When Melissa isn’t writing or speaking to children or educators, she’s usually exploring natural places near her home or around the world.